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THE WELCOME BUILDING

SEPTEMBER 2017

The Welcome Building

The Welcome Building in Bishop Auckland consists of a new viewing tower and central ticketing hall for the The Auckland Project. It acts as an access point and gateway to the wider site whilst also giving views over the town and landscape setting. The tower – a timber framed structure – is now well under way on site.

The building team has worked tirelessly and with the highest level of precision, to build the in-situ concrete lift shaft. Working from the ground up seemed to take an age.

Meanwhile, the enormous larch glulam beams have been carefully crafted and manually grey-oiled in the joiner’s workshop.

The frames are now being lifted into position on site and suddenly the building can be seen. Almost in an instant. As if the past four years had happened in the blink of an eye.

We are so excited and proud – even – to see this fantasy project becoming real at last. But with completion on the horizon, time seems to now move all too fast.

BIENNALE ARCHITETTURA 2016

FEBRUARY 2016

Biennale Architettura 2016

Preparations for Biennale Architettura 2016 have begun in earnest: concepts advanced; collaborators recruited; designs developed. Niall and Yeoryia (Manolopoulou, of AY Architects) have met with a number of experts on the subject of dementia and design, including scientists at UCL; the Centre Manager at the Alzheimer’s Centre in Dublin; the Vice-Chair of the European Working Group of People with Dementia and experts from the Dementia Services Development Centre at the University of Stirling. We are excited by the emerging details of the various elements of this year’s exhibition, and look forward to unveiling our contribution in May.